


Heavenly Host

by rfsmiley



Series: Heavenly Host universe [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Abortion, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pining, Pregnancy, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Roommates, a little bit of domestic fluff anyway, female!Aziraphale, male!Aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 19:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18289079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfsmiley/pseuds/rfsmiley
Summary: Aziraphale has a problem and Crowley rises to the occasion. Or: the one where they have a baby.





	1. Angel

**Author's Note:**

> One, I should be prepping my own project for Camp Nano, and two, we need another 18k of ineffable husband babyfic like a hole in the head. But this came Athena-like out of my leg one day, as in, all I needed to do was write out paragraphs that already existed. So here they are.  
> Marking it as compliant with both TV and book canon because it takes place after those events (and before the South Downs). There might be a couple of details awry, since I am writing this in the weeks before the show.  
> Trigger warnings in the tags. This is not fluff.  
> 

Aziraphale had been inconveniently discorporated sometime in the fall of 2017, due to an unfortunate incident involving a goat, a Volkswagen, and one of the London Symphony Orchestra oboe players, and after several prolonged and heated arguments with Gabriel, Raphael, and eventually Michael himself (who claimed that he needed to triple-check all of Aziraphale’s paperwork, after the almost-Apocalypse), he had had to settle for what he could get.

All three had howled when he tried on the body, and he had glowered, irate. But at that point, it was already too late. 

Admittedly, it wasn’t unprecedented. He had been female once before (or well, female-presenting; angels needed to make special effort to meet biological requirements), in the early 1200s. But even then, Aziraphale remembered, he had bloody well hated it. Of course, it was a new world, and all of that, but still.

Gabriel had sent him out in a skimpy lavender sundress. The bastard had a sense of humor.

Aziraphale walked stiffly through the crowded Soho streets, ignoring the looks and occasional whistles he got (did all women under the age of forty put up with this _all the time?_ ). He let himself into his shop, picked up his mail, unlocked the door to the little stairwell in the back room, climbed the twenty-three steps to his flat, flicked on the light, and stood there at the threshold for a long moment with his new chest heaving, trying to calm down. Then he unclenched his fists and went to put the kettle on.

He spared a moment of appreciation for the fact that he still had power, despite everything, as he turned the dial of an electric burner and it glowed into life. Crowley must have seen to it that the bills were paid. It was a footnote in the Arrangement, although, of course, the obligation only came into play if the other knew of the discorporation to begin with. His hands grew still on the stove, at that thought. How distasteful. Crowley must have laughed himself sick when he heard the story.

He would probably laugh himself sick again, when he saw the outcome.

Not yet, Aziraphale told himself, taking down a mug. Don’t think of it yet.

He felt better with a generous amount of hot Darjeeling inside him. Slowly, deliberately, he began to go through the mail. The most recent date he could find told him he had been gone for at least ten months – _ten months!_ If Gabriel hadn’t been such a bloody-minded –

He took a deep breath and went on. He recycled a series of Tesco coupons, paused over a postcard from Crowley (he had drawn devil horns and a tail on Big Ben and written, _Call when you get back, yeah?_ without a signature, as if it could have been anyone else), and then, suddenly, firmly, he set the rest of the mail aside and pushed back from his little dining set.

 _Deep breaths, old fellow,_ he thought, _it can’t be that bad,_ and he went to examine himself in the mirror.

Crowley probably would have fallen over in shock to learn that the angel did, in fact, possess a full-length mirror, but he did, even if it was normally hidden by a closet door. Aziraphale paused for a moment with his hand on its little doorknob, feeling his pulse in his throat. Then, determined to get the cursed thing over with, he shut it and glared into the mottled reflection.

Blue eyes looked back at him. That much was all right, his eyes were always blue, Aziraphale thought distantly. But the rest – !

He tried to look at her objectively. A young woman, perhaps thirty or thereabouts, with short, untidy blond hair, peered back at him. She was not unattractive, though he thought she looked underfed. She was very small, puny even, barely five foot. Her eyes were big in an elfin face, shining brightly with anger, and her cheeks slowly suffused with pink as he stared at her. His own face felt hot; he touched his fingertips to his skin, absently, and was surprised when she mirrored the gesture.

Well, he thought, looking at his hands, his new slender wrists. He supposed it easily could have been worse.

Nevertheless, he went out that evening and got quietly and efficiently drunk.

*

"It's not that there's anything _wrong_ with women," he was slurring to someone. It was ten thirty, he was on his fourth glass of merlot, and the world had taken on a pleasantly rosy hue. "They're lovely, plenty of lovely women. Smart, accomplished. It's just. It's not for me. You know?"

The stranger looked back at him with amusement. At some point in the last half-hour, he had taken the seat next to Aziraphale, summoned the bartender, and ordered something called a rusty nail. This was perplexing to an already tipsy angel - perhaps the good gentleman didn't realize that this was a bar - but the bartender had brought back alcohol, so he supposed he had probably missed something. "What do you mean, it's not for you?" the stranger asked. "Listen, love, coming out as straight isn't a thing. No one cares if you like men. Adam and Eve, yeah?"

"Lovely couple," Aziraphale agreed.

"What?"

"Anyway, it's not liking them, it's being one," he went on sadly. He stared into the dregs of his wineglass, and then finished it off.

"Oh, being one," said the stranger. "I see. So this is some kind of gender identity crisis," and he gestured at Aziraphale's body, slumped morosely against the bar, still barely covered by the hateful lavender sundress. (He had tried to change, but none of his other clothes had fit, and when he shrank them, even he had had to admit that the dress was the better option.)

"It's not a crisis," Aziraphale admitted, still glum. "It's just, y'know, an incovissit." He squinted, and tried again, focusing on making the syllables come out cleanly. "Inconvenience."

The man barked a laugh. "An inconvenience," he repeated. "Women run this bloody world, and you have the stones to sit there and tell me it's inconvenient?"

"I _don't_ have the stones," Aziraphale explained patiently. Then he remembered something. "Although, I wouldn't the other way, either."

The man chose to ignore this. "Listen to me," he said very seriously. "Your lot have got it made. Jewelry, free drinks, handsome men buying you dinner every week…" and he waved a hand expressively.

To his credit, Aziraphale did not find this very persuasive. Even in a male-presenting body, he had a handsome man buy him dinner nearly every week - or demon, rather, but it amounted to the same thing. But the stranger was already going on.

"Look, I'll show you," he was saying. He flagged down the bartender, lifted his glass. "Another of these," he said imperiously, "and one for the lady, please."

“Oh, you really needn’t,” Aziraphale began, but the stranger only smiled.

“Please,” he said. “I insist.”

His face felt warm again. No one besides Crowley had bought him a drink in decades. “Well,” he said, almost bashful. “Thank you very much, my dear.”

“John,” said the other, extending a hand. “And you are?”

“Aziraph -” The four glasses of wine must have been stronger than he’d thought; he managed to cut himself off, but only just. He coughed, trying to backtrack, but John simply raised an eyebrow.

“Azira,” he echoed. “That’s unusual.” His eyes roved down over the body, the clinging cotton sundress. “But _very_ pretty,” and the tone was laden with meaning.

“Well,” said Aziraphale, still feeling heat in his cheeks. “Um.”

The bartender brought them their drinks and then went off to the other end of the bar, where a hysterical bachelorette party had just arrived. His new drinking companion stared after her for a moment, with an intensity that actually made Aziraphale turn and look, wondering what had caught his attention. But it was only a group of ordinary, giggling women, toasting each other with apple green shots.

“Sorry,” John muttered, “thought I knew the bride for a second.” He blinked, and then smiled again, passing Aziraphale one of the glasses, full of a rich and cloudy amber. “Here you are.”

Aziraphale hid a grimace; he had never much cared for hard liquor. But then, he thought sadly, it would be terribly rude to refuse, when the gentleman was being so kind, and so he took a sip, to be polite. It tasted like Scotch, and something else. “The Drambuie,” John suggested, when he said as much.

“It’s not bad,” Aziraphale hastened to add, and was surprised to find that he was being truthful. He drank again. “Thank you, um. John.”

John toasted him. “To women,” he said, and drank.

“Women,” sighed the angel, freshly reminded of his predicament.

“Like I said,” John said. “They run the world. They get everything. They are the literal gatekeepers of sex.” He winked conspiratorially. “Plus, there’s the whole multiple orgasms thing.”

This was something that Aziraphale had never even heard of. He looked down at his body. He was fairly flat-chested, but that was to be expected; his new body, unlike his old, padded, comfortable one, was waifish and small. And, well, as for the rest of it –

Curiosity made him hesitate, and then, with the giddy recklessness that came from several drinks, Aziraphale closed his eyes and _concentrated,_ with an effort that crinkled his nose _._ He had the sudden sensation of being halved in an unusual place, as when a knife is used on a soft fruit, leaving it seamed and open. An equally abrupt impression of depth. The tingling knowledge that if he crossed his legs just so, it would be rather nice. But there was nothing earth-shattering. Nothing that merited the sly look in his companion’s face.

“Hmm,” he said, doubtfully.

Later, he would wonder how he could have ever been so stupid.

“I think,” John said, leaning towards him; his breath was hot on Aziraphale’s ear. “I think you just need to give it a chance.”

He was rather handsome, actually, the angel thought suddenly. He had unruly dark hair, and nice cheekbones, and dancing brown eyes. He was what you might call attractive.

“You might be right,” he murmured, marveling at the alien mix of endorphins. “I might have been too hasty.”

“I’m always right, love,” said John, satisfied, sitting back. “So. Come here often?”

Aziraphale lost track of time as they sat there talking. They drank two more rusty nails apiece, toasting women, alcohol, even the world (though Aziraphale regretted this last; something about that phrase belonged exclusively to him and to Crowley, and no one else, even intruiging dark-eyed strangers). A pleasant buzz was vibrating through him as it crept towards midnight, as well as, to his great interest, something else, heavy with possibility.

 _John,_ he thought, savoring the name. He hesitated, and then reached out to his companion with a brush of power, wanting to know more. John Earnest Pewitts. He was a barrister, up-and-coming, popular with the bench and ladies alike. He was charming, had always been charming. He was from Essex, had a cat, had a flat that rivalled Crowley’s. He loved jazz, silk ties, and whiskey. Especially whiskey. Especially the drink they were having tonight.

But here there was more to discover; the solid ground of his mind fell away, plunging into a strange metaphysical abyss. The angel probed. A predatory, purposeful knife-edge lurked in the depths of the man’s mind, something wicked hidden there as he watched Aziraphale, listening to him laugh, examining his slender body and how it moved.

There was also intent.

He recoiled, and nearly fell out of his seat.

“I think you’ve probably had enough,” said John, laughing as he half-caught the angel, helping him slide off the bar stool instead of actually falling. “Come on, come with me. I’ll call you a cab,” he added, in a voice that was too loud, even given the surrounding chatter.

“I’m quite all right, thank you,” Aziraphale said hurriedly. At least, that was what he tried to say. His lips suddenly didn’t quite seem to be working properly. Somewhere far in the back of his mind, alarm bells began ringing in a frantic chorus.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” said John, looking down at him, amused. “You did well. You’re pretty little. I think that much alcohol would have floored me, if I were you.”

He _was_ smaller, Aziraphale realized. He was only five foot, now. He had forgotten. And who knew what kind of liver this body had? He tried to examine himself, to see how the organ was handling the onslaught of the last few hours, but it was like sinking into cotton.

Something was wrong. There wasn’t only alcohol in his system. There was something else, like a chemical fog, something that was eating away at his reason like acid. He pushed at it, slipped into it, was swept along like a tide.

“Let’s get you that cab,” said John. There was a glitter in his eyes that Aziraphale didn’t like, a concrete reminder of what he had seen in the man’s mind. A little frightened, he attempted to sober up, but he suddenly couldn’t remember how. But no, that was impossible. It was easy. He had done it with Crowley a thousand times. It was as simple as snapping your fingers.

He lifted a hand, looked at his fingertips. They seemed very far away. They seemed almost comical; they were so _small_. Women had such delicate small hands. And now, how strange: blackness was eating at the edges of his vision; his fingers went blurry even as he watched.

He tried to snap them. He failed.

John had a hand in the small of his back and was steering them both towards a door, which opened. Aziraphale had the fleeting impression of a narrow alley, a corridor of star-filled sky overhead. And then there was a brick wall against his back and John’s mouth was on his throat and Aziraphale was falling, falling.

Only then was there full understanding. And with it, horror.  

No, he thought, wildly, with the last remaining fragment of his mind. He was an angel, this was insane, it could not be happening. Frantic, he pushed out with his power, shoving the human away, attempting to burn him, maim him, call down the wrath of God. He would summon the storm; he would eat this man’s heart in the marketplace. But no, no, he was pushing with his actual hands after all, his small woman’s hands, into a broad and implacable chest. Useless. Useless!

“I think you make a cute woman,” said John maliciously, into his collarbone, and Aziraphale was gone.

*

The sun was hot and blazing in a strip of cloudless sky. Aziraphale cringed away from the light, and sat up, banging his head sharply on a dumpster lid as he did so. He gasped and brought his hands to his face, as if trying to contain the splitting headache that suddenly roared to life, as vital and furious as a tiger. It wasn’t just his head, either. He hurt _everywhere._ For one awful, disoriented moment, he wondered if he had been run over by a bus.

He cracked an eye open and took stock of his surroundings. He was still in the alley behind the bar. Specifically, he was in a recess between a dumpster and the neighboring building’s fire escape, a hollow that had prevented him from seen by the occasional passerby. The sun was also only now at its zenith; he had probably been hidden in shadow for the last several hours, left to sleep it off, after –

Memory descended. The knowledge of violation was immediate and absolute.

Another knot of people passed in front of the mouth of the alley, their voices raised in an argument. The angel flinched as he saw them go by. Disregarding the squalor, he carefully inched himself further into the niche, crushing beer cans and peanut shells as he went. He was not willing to be seen. Not yet. Not before he himself had assessed just how dire things were.

 _Deep breaths,_ he told himself, for the second time in two days. _It can’t be that bad._

But this time, it was.

His sundress was filthy, almost unrecognizable. Pale purple cotton had turned dark and greasy, speckled with grime and spots that looked distressingly like bloodstains. Similar marks marred his thighs, as well as a long smear of something else that didn't bear thinking about. He touched it with a cautious finger. It flaked away, ephemeral, like ashes. Well, that seemed appropriate. He did feel as though he had passed through fire.

He wondered if he was in shock. How would he know, if he was? Was there a telltale sign? His human heart did appear to be beating rather quickly. He tried to take slow, measured breaths. He willed himself to be calm. It didn't much help.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and attempted to collect his scattered thoughts. Then, nervously, he reached for his power.

It was waiting for him, thank the Lord. It surged up in answer to the summons, a muted crackle that hummed in his bones, electric. And yet, the angel thought, the divine feeling was tainted. Even as he felt it course through him, he was reminded, with equally charged nausea, of the terror he had felt the night before, when he had called it and it had not come.

Well. It was here now. He was whole again. In a manner of speaking.

He might have fallen to pieces – it would have been easy – but this was neither the time nor the place for that. Instead, he took a deep breath and summoned a spark. Methodically, he sent it across his skin and over the folds of fabric, washing himself with his own grace. The lilac dress became new again; the violet bruises faded. Seconds later, it would have been impossible for a stranger to look at him and see that anything had happened. He stood up at last on wobbly legs and smoothed the cotton skirt down.

Using celestial powers to banish one’s own pain felt slightly more blasphemous, but Aziraphale had done it before, and he was more than willing to do so again now. Working quickly, he pressed on key nerve endings _here_ and _here_ until his body felt like his own again – or at least, as much as it could, under the circumstances.

He did feel a little better when he was numb. Of course, he perceived that he still had other injuries, more dreadful, less visible, that would not be as easy to heal. But, thank heavens, he could simply skip that step, Aziraphale reflected; he could just go back to being sexless again. Still, a dark curiosity as to the extent of the damage turned his power inward, through tissue and blood, searching, soothing.

He did not expect what he found.

The nausea returned in full force. He leaned dizzily against the dumpster.

 “Oh, dear,” he said, very quietly.


	2. Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many things appear in this chapter that don’t reflect my personal opinions on the topic: abortion, international adoption practices, how to handle a rape/rapist, even correct pronoun assignation. For example, I feel like it would be irresponsible not to point out how many fertilized eggs are naturally lost… which is why stuff like plan B should always be considered an option, IMO.  
> Edit 5/17/19: given everything going on in the States I did nearly take this fic down so let me be explicit. I agree with this version of Crowley; I empathize with people who feel like this version of Aziraphale; I don't think either of them would agree with a prescriptive decision being made for them; also, the conversation in this chapter was necessary for this particular narrative. Kthxbye

It was a rainy August evening when Crowley got the call that would change their lives, or at least that was how he thought of it later. Well, his life, anyway. He supposed Aziraphale’s had already been changed.

He should have known it was trouble when it was his mobile that rang, and not the main line. His mobile _never_ rang.

“Crowley,” said a woman’s voice.

“How did you get this number?” he demanded, hitting pause on the remote. “I don’t want a vacation in Belize, or whatever it is you’re hawking -”

“ _Crowley,_ ” said the woman’s voice, too patiently, and then he _knew._

“Aziraphale,” he breathed, and he started to laugh. “Well, well. They really fucked up Above, didn’t they? You haven’t been a woman in a thousand years. Is she cute, at least?”

A long pause. Then, “So I’ve been told.”

“When did you get back?” Crowley asked, catching his breath. “Want to meet for a drink? I want to see the new look.”

“No, I don’t want to meet for a drink,” Aziraphale said, sharply. “Crowley, what are you doing tonight?”

Crowley hesitated. His eyes darted guiltily back to the TV screen. “Finishing the Great British Baking Show on Netflix” didn’t have the proper demonic ring to it. “Oh, you know,” he said, lamely. “Some temptations. Wiles and so on. Haven’t had you to police me for a bit, so. I’m really in the thick of it now.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale sighed. Oh, he had missed that exasperated tone. Not that the angel would ever get him to admit it.

“The bookshop, I assume,” he said, unable to keep the smile off his face, as he propped his heels up on the arm of the sofa.

“Please.”

“Nine o’clock?” Crowley suggested. “Do you want takeout?”

“Sooner, I think,” said Aziraphale, “and no.”

Crowley hesitated. Something was wrong. “Alcohol, then?”

He could hear her – him? her? – breathing slowly, steady inhales and exhales, on the other end. “Could you just come over,” the voice said quietly.

Crowley was already standing, had already switched off the television. “I can be there in half an hour.”

“Thank you,” said Aziraphale, and she hung up on him.

*

He had brought wine anyway, feeling that it was the appropriate thing to do: a sinfully pricy eight-year-old Malbec, disguised in a brown paper bag that was disintegrating in the downpour. It had, after all, been ten months, he reflected. The angel deserved something nice.

He had also, for reasons that were not clear to him, overdressed, which was a bit embarrassing in hindsight. Herringbone button-downs, even with the sleeves turned up to the elbows, and skinny black ties stood out like a sore thumb in the bohemia of Soho. Someone on a bicycle whistled at him from across the street and Crowley absently tied their shoelaces together with a flick of his wrist, not waiting to hear the crash, as he stepped across the puddles and mounted the curb to the bookshop.

A single light was burning in the window. The demon paused, curiously unwilling to knock. Trepidation breathed on his neck, pressed her lips to his spine, making him shiver. Or perhaps it was just the rain, running in rivulets under his collar.

It was only Aziraphale, he thought, bewildered; it couldn’t be anything too awful. And the storm was ruining his shirt. He mentally shook himself and rapped on the door.

A moment later, he heard the slide of the deadbolt, and it swung open. Crowley pushed his way in, wiping the water from his face. “Thanksss,” he said to the figure, the hilariously small figure, that had let him in. She hesitated for a moment, and then, plainly reluctant to face him, turned around.

“Hello, Crowley,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

Crowley looked down on her with growing delight. Gone was stout, surly Aziraphale of days past, who had been of a height with Crowley and broader across the chest and waist: solid, touchable. Instead, the angel standing nervously by the door couldn’t have been much more than five foot, her frame almost boyish, tiny, with narrow shoulders and hips. She had a shock of dandelion-fuzz hair, pale blond and unruly, in the untidiest pixie he had ever seen. The only thing that was the same were her eyes, stormy blue, as they had been since Eden, currently snapping with annoyance as Crowley assessed her.

“ _Very_ cute,” was his verdict. “Someone was having a laugh, eh?”

The annoyance changed to something else that Crowley couldn’t quite read, before she moved past him.

He followed her, as he generally did, and as they entered the back room, he looked around the familiar, cramped space with his smile widening. How he had missed this place, over the last several months! With no little relief, he made a beeline for his customary chair and made to set the wine on the table.

Then, to his great surprise, he heard Aziraphale unlock another door.

Frowning, he turned. She was at a threshold that he himself had never crossed, the little stairwell up to her flat, keys in hand. Questions burned on his tongue, but she was already ascending, and so he went after her, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Now he was definitely nervous.

“All right,” he said, as she flicked on the lights, dumped her keys in a bowl. “What’s going on?”

Another glance, inscrutable. She sat down at the table, a little dining set for two. It looked pathetic, dwarfed by the size of the room, and was covered with a film of dust. Repelled, Crowley declined to sit. He leaned against the doorjamb, waiting.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“We usually do,” said the demon dryly. She didn’t rise to the bait.

“It’s – I -” and she swallowed, and admitted, “This might be difficult.”

An idea stirred in his mind, a possibility that had haunted him since the almost-Apocalypse, and he felt suddenly ill. “You’re not being recalled?”

“What?” Her eyes flickered to his. “No, of course not.”

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as she fell silent again. The worst had not happened. They still had time.

“Angel,” he said, when she still did not speak. “Just tell me. Whatever it is, we’ve survived worse.”

“It’s not really a ‘we’ this time,” said Aziraphale. Whatever _that_ meant, Crowley thought.

More silence, and then she cleared her throat.

“I had, an, um.” Two pink spots burned high on her cheeks and she looked fixedly at her hands. “Recently, I, I had. A nonconsensual encounter with someone.” The words came out all in a rush, and she appeared to be holding herself very stiffly, as if nervous about his reply. Crowley had the distinct and nonsensical impression that if he prodded her, she would shatter into tiny slivers of glass.

Then her words sank in. Crowley blinked. “A nonconsensual…”

“Yes.”

“You mean…”

“Yes.”

He had to say it anyway, had to be sure. “You’re talking about rape.”

“Well,” said Aziraphale, her eyes glassy, as she were very far away. “In so many words.”

He considered this, and then he might have laughed outright, if her demeanor hadn’t been so serious. “That’s impossible,” he observed.

Aziraphale glanced up, and then her eyes darted away again, as if meeting his gaze had wounded her somehow. “I assure you it isn’t,” she replied, her voice suddenly clear again, and rather tart. “It happens to people all the time, you know.”

“You’re not _people_ , you’re an angel. Angels are sexless unless they make an effort,” Crowley reminded her. Since she apparently needed reminding. “And I’ve seen you vanish people with a snap of your fingers, when you were really pissed off.” He was shaking his head, slowly. “You’re having me on.”

“Crowley, honestly,” Aziraphale snapped. “Next you’re going to be asking me if I was wearing anything provocative. I’m telling you, I didn’t -” She stopped, clearly fumbling for the right words.

“But then how -” Crowley began, bewildered, and then he too cut himself off. “I don’t understand,” he said at last.

“I was _drugged_ ,” she snarled.

Crowley stared at her.

“I had the bits, all right?” She looked at her hands again. “I was just… I don’t know why. I was curious. And I was with someone, just a stranger, we were just having drinks, in a pub, I wasn’t planning to do anything,” she added hastily, at the look on Crowley’s face. “And he bought us some more, and I thought, well, all right then, and we were having a laugh, and then.” She swallowed. “And then we weren’t.”

“He put something in your drink,” Crowley said slowly. That hadn’t been one of his, but he was familiar with the concept. Hell had sent a misplaced commendation sometime in the 1990s. Crowley had shredded it.

“And I couldn’t,” she fluttered her fingers, their public shorthand for _miracle_ , that had only ever been used in jest, in different situations, in a different world. Then she sighed and rubbed her face. “It happened so fast.”

His hands were clenching and unclenching. This made no sense. It could not be.

“Who?” he said, very quietly.

“I’m not going to tell you, you’ll kill him,” said Aziraphale tiredly. It wasn’t a question.

“I’ll do worse than that,” Crowley promised.

Aziraphale looked at him. She was tempted, Crowley could see. All she had to do was give the name, and then. Plausible deniability.

“Aziraphale. Tell me.”

“No.”

“He has to be punished.”

“That’s not how it works.”

He stared. “But - our side will get him eventually _anyway_ -”

“ _We’re_ not supposed to think like that,” said Aziraphale, distantly. “They’re supposed to have a chance for redemption. Through His grace.”

“Grace,” he echoed, his skin crawling.

“Yes.”

Somewhere, a clock was ticking loudly. Crowley stilled the second hand with a thought, crushed the gears into dust for good measure.

“That,” he said flatly, into the sudden silence, “is the worst thing I have ever heard.”

“Crowley -”

“You’re going to tell me it’s ineffable, aren’t you.” He wouldn’t be able to stand it, if she did. “Ineffable, for some berk to go and put his - _”_

“Don’t be _obscene,_ ” Aziraphale protested.

“It’s already _obscene,_ ” said Crowley, furiously, taking a step towards her, and she put her hand up, closing her eyes.

“Stop,” she said. There was a gravitas in her voice that spoke of flaming swords.

He bit back several responses and waited for the fire in his blood to subside. It didn’t take long; a sudden, chilling flood of helplessness extinguished it. He held himself still until he was sure he had control over his voice, and then he said, as evenly as he could manage, “If you don’t want me to eviscerate him for you, angel, then what did you call me here for?”

Aziraphale’s eyes were still closed, and she breathed deeply for a moment, not answering him. He tasted the ashes of his own fury, waiting. Something was definitely wrong.

“Crowley,” she said, finally. “Look at me.”

“I am.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Crowley felt a dart of foreboding. Uncomfortably, he reached out with a tendril of power and read her body. She was definitely wholly female, even now, everything that a human would have between her legs and below her navel.

And then. Something else. Something extra. No larger than an apple seed.   

He leaned back against the door frame and stared at the ceiling.

“Ah.”

“Quite.”

“You’re…”

“Yes.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he admitted.

Aziraphale let out a noise that wasn’t a laugh, and yet. “Yes, thank you, Crowley, I’m aware.”

“Well, I don’t _really_ see the problem,” Crowley said. “It’s not like you even have to go to a clinic. I mean, you could just -” and it was his turn to twiddle his fingers, meaningfully, when Aziraphale finally opened her eyes and looked at him.

 “Could I?” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s just a bunch of cells, at the moment.”

“I know. I know,” Aziraphale said, wretchedly. “But we don’t actually _know_ when an immortal soul attaches. Not for certain. I filed a memo with Gabriel asking for disclosure _weeks ago_ , and he only just replied, and he said it was classified. And -” She cut herself off and buried her head in her arms.

Crowley was appalled. “So – wait, are you saying you’re actually going to -”

There was no response. The demon felt the slow creep of horror down his spine. “What if you’re wrong?” he demanded.

“What if I’m right?” came the muffled reply.

“Look, there’s no evidence that – I mean, the humans have done the research, it’s still early enough! You don’t have to -”

“Oh, Crowley,” said Aziraphale into the table. “Go away, if you’re not going to be helpful.”

Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the wall. The silence was deafening. He wished vaguely that he hadn’t broken the little clock. He also had the horrible suspicion that, though her hunched form was perfectly still, Aziraphale was either crying, or trying not to. Neither option was acceptable.

“I need a drink,” he said, finally. He banged through the kitchen, took a couple of wineglasses down from the cupboard. Aziraphale lifted her face, which was, mercifully, dry. She watched as he opened the bottle he’d brought and poured them two full glasses, nearly to the rim: no need for etiquette tonight.

“Go to a fertility clinic,” he suggested, as he handed one to her. “Transfer it to someone else.”

“The new body would reject it without a genetic match,” she said dully, accepting it. Crowley took a seat across from her, watching her sip. Then his insides suddenly turned to ice and he struck like a snake, smacking her arm aside, even before his brain had fully caught up and rationalized the movement. A bloody arc hit the wall and ran in streaks down to the skirting.

“Crowley, what in _heaven’s_ name,” Aziraphale sputtered, wiping drops from her face.

He tugged the wineglass free of her hand and set it firmly out of reach. “Sorry. Sorry. Overreaction. Um. You can’t drink.”

“What? Oh.” Aziraphale’s eyes widened. She sat lost in thought for a moment, then waved an absent hand at the wall, where the spilled wine vanished.

They sat in silence. Crowley wanted badly, very badly, to down his own glass, but felt it would be in poor taste, under the circumstances. The minutes crept by.

“You can’t keep it,” he said at last. His voice was hoarser than he would have liked. “I mean, raise it. I mean, it would be insane.”

“No, of course not,” said Aziraphale grimly. “A parent that never ages?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Incredulity stole over him. “You thought about it.”

“No, I -” She sighed. “No. Obviously, _obviously_ it will be adopted. To a good home.”

“Obviously,” Crowley repeated, trying to peer into her eyes. She was still strangely reluctant to look back at him. “Aziraphale. Look, I – You - Are you all right?”

He regretted the words instantly, instantly knew how stupid and inane they were, but she didn’t lash out at his idiocy, the way he would have, if it were him. Instead, she leaned forward onto the table, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’m _angry_ ,” she muttered. “None of this should have been possible. Like you said. I should have been sexless, I should have had my _power_ – I’m an _angel!_ ”

“And I’m a demon, you shouldn’t listen to me,” Crowley said. A thought suddenly struck him. “Wait a minute. Does Gabriel _know_?”

“No, of course not. What would I even -”

But something else was bothering him now. “You said you contacted him _weeks ago,_ ” he said slowly. “When exactly did this happen?”

She was quiet again, and then confessed so softly that he wondered for a moment if he had misheard. “July twenty-fifth.”

“Ju – G – Chr – Aziraphale. It’s the end of August.” He was cold, then hot, then cold again. The angel hadn’t called him for over a _month_.

She didn’t move. “Yes. Well.”

Crowley sat back and drummed his fingers on the table. All right, he thought.

All right.

“So,” he said, and was grateful that his voice was level; that was something, at least. “How are we doing this?”

There was another long pause, and then she took her hands from her face and looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time all evening. “What?”

“Well, you can’t stay here. Not alone, not in your condition,” Crowley said, gesturing at the walls, trying to encompass the dust, the forlorn wallpaper, the patch by the fridge that he rather suspected was mold. The fact that she would be perceived as young and alone and vulnerable in the heart of Soho.

“That’s sexist,” Aziraphale said, but without rancor. “Anyway, I’m an _angel,_ I’m not in _danger_.”

He glared at her, then, pointedly, at her stomach. Pink spots reappeared in her cheeks. “Well, it’s hardly likely to happen _twice,_ ” she snapped.

“Angel,” he said, changing tack, summoning all the persuasive skill he could muster, which, being the serpent of Eden, was not insignificant. She looked suspicious at the sudden yellow gleam in his eyes. “How much do you really know about this, about any of this? Babies, adoption,” he waved a hand. “Be honest.”

“More than _you,_ ” she huffed, but this, he saw, had hit its mark.

“Not much, then,” Crowley said. For a moment a strange impulse washed over him, a temptation to reach across the table and take her hand. He dug his nails into his palms. “Look. Come back to Mayfair with me, and we’ll -”

“Mayfair,” Aziraphale interjected, disbelieving. “You mean, your flat.”

“I mean, my flat,” he parroted, annoyed.

 “Crowley, that’s …” He waited. She was clearly floundering. “I mean, it’s very… kind of you, I’m honored, but…”

“Aziraphale, you _called_ me,” the demon said, trying to be patient. “Even if it did take you five bloody weeks,” _you stupid bastard,_ he did not add, feeling it might be unhelpful. “Let me _help_ you.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then her eyes moved past him, to the little galley kitchen, the cramped, dark hallway stacked with books. Something in Crowley’s gut coiled tightly around itself as he waited for the refusal.

She looked back at him, and then, looking very small indeed, she nodded.

*

He regretted it almost immediately, of course. Aziraphale was a terrible houseguest. She always had to get into everything, like a big inquisitive cat. He found himself squirming as she stroked the leaves of his plants, examined his sound system, even had the nerve to brush her fingertips against his da Vinci. After managing to steer her away from it, he found her not five minutes later in front of his cherished statuette, the depiction of good and evil, running her hands mutely over the gilded wings.

“Let’s put on the telly, shall we?” he said, beginning to get rather desperate.

Aziraphale had never cared much for television, but she sat, obediently, at one end of the sofa as he located the remote. He found an episode of Friends for her (season five, he saw immediately, Monica and Chandler were only just getting together) and, to his relief, it distracted her long enough for him to sneak into the kitchen and have a stiff drink.

By the time he came back, she had fallen asleep. _That_ was interesting, he thought, staring down at her. He had never known her to sleep before. It must be the body, already changing, making human demands on behalf of its cargo.

Moving gingerly, so as not to wake her, he sat at the other end of the sofa and pulled out a laptop. It was black, barely as thick as a pencil, and still pristine; he used it to spam YouTube and Twitter with troll accounts, and only that. It had wifi, of course, because he expected it to, not because he had ever paid for a router. He flipped it open and cracked his knuckles.

 _Here we go,_ he thought.

His preliminary research displeased him. In the U.K., giving up a child from birth was extremely rare. In most cases, the mother was also given six weeks to change her mind – _we don’t need that,_ Crowley thought, alarmed, trying to picture an infant in his flat for a month and a half and failing. A process called “concurrent planning” relocated infants on a high-risk register, but required court intervention to see whether the infant could safely be put back with its birth family. This too was a circus that he did not want.

He switched tabs and thought for a moment, then, recalling certain American television episodes (as, onscreen, Monica and Chandler argued over a failed weekend getaway), he composed a new Google search. Oh, yes. This was much better. In the United States, it was possible to work with a private adoption agency, review adoptive family profiles, and select your child’s new parents. They, in turn, often took the baby home straight from the hospital.

Bingo.

“We’re going to America,” he informed Aziraphale, nudging her awake with his foot.

“Whassat?” she said, sleepily. Crowley felt that funny tightening in his stomach again as she lifted her head, eyes bleary, her hair wild and tufted from her nap. In that moment, she looked strangely young, too young for this to be happening to her.

She is six thousand years old, and so are you, he told himself, startled. Get a grip.

He showed her the sites.

“You can’t go to a different country just to give up a baby, dear boy,” said Aziraphale, going from zero to patronizing in literal seconds. The endearment was also ridiculous, coming from a tiny blonde who looked twenty years his junior, but Crowley held his tongue. “Even I know that.”

“We’re not exactly British citizens, angel,” he pointed out, and she blushed so deeply that even her chest reddened. Yes, Aziraphale being female was very interesting indeed. “Give me a week, I can get us the documents.”

“So get us the documents,” she said shortly.

He opened another tab and got to work.


	3. Roommates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Boston, as everyone should.  
> Errors about the adoption process are my own.

It ended up taking them three weeks to get their affairs in order. Crowley laboriously went through Hell’s paperwork and identified a cluster of deviltry waiting for assignment in America (specifically New England, which wasn’t a surprise; there was always plenty of work for Hell in New England). He wrote the memo in an evening, pointing out the opportunities and identifying several more, and filed it under Transfers. Aziraphale wrote a similar document when the approval had gone through, with much of the same content, except that hers decried it and suggested divine obstruction.

In the meantime, they sent emails to adoption agencies across several states, sketching the situation, leaving details vague. A few days later Crowley got a bite. There was one in Boston that sounded dubious, but that might, underscore might, be willing to work with them.

That was good enough, he figured. They did, after all, have unique powers of persuasion at their disposal.

Aziraphale was leery – she had not much liked Boston since 1773, had never gotten over the Tea Party, not really – but at two months pregnant, she was starting to be anxious to have a plan in place. Crowley hardly had to persuade her at all. He bought the tickets, put together a fat binder of false identification, and they were off.

Their plane touched down after midnight and they took a cab straight from the airport to the Boston Ritz-Carlton, a twin of their familiar haunt. Crowley smiled like a snake at the flustered receptionist, who could not understand how two suites were indeed open, when they had certainly not been an hour ago. “Thanks much,” he said, taking the keycards. She sputtered as they walked away.

They slept, a little. Then, at sunrise, they went together to the South End, where, equipped with doughnuts and a laptop, they made a list of local furnished apartments. To be more accurate, rather, one of them did; the other, who was dreadful at navigating the internet (Aziraphale had actually once asked if Google was a kind of eyewear), fed scraps of their breakfast to the birds.

“There,” said Crowley, sitting back at last, setting down the pen. “I think that’s all of them.”

To his resignation, however, they only ever made it as far as the second listing. An archaic brownstone in Beacon Hill, it enchanted Aziraphale on sight. She exclaimed over everything, the bowed bookcases, the quaint little dining set, the ancient ornate light fixtures, with something close to rapture. The demon, following behind as she went from room to room, could only see that it was desperately in need of some updates. He longed to turn some of the appliances chrome, to change the well-worn furniture to leather, but she pointed a warning finger at him. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

It was far from perfect, Crowley thought. It was also only a quarter of the size of his London flat. But it had two bedrooms, and a glorious bay window that looked down on Charles Street, which they both liked. He felt that he could tolerate it for seven months.

The paperwork was done by the following evening.

Beacon Hill, whatever the shortcomings of its apartments, did turn out to be an ideal location. It was a three-minute walk to the Boston Common, which Crowley strongly suspected would be their new St. James, as it was thick with ducks. It was an equally short stroll to the Public Garden (and oh, how Aziraphale mourned when she learned that they had missed [the swan boat season](https://swanboats.com/) by a matter of days). There were also nearby cafes with whimsical pastries, and charming little restaurants, and a jaunty ice cream parlor that the angel insisted on visiting one afternoon. She got a vanilla cone, while Crowley, to his own surprise, got a raspberry lolly, and they took their spoils to the parks, where they wandered for hours.

It took about a week for them to settle in, and then, on the last day of September, they went to the adoption agency.

*

Crowley’s contact turned out to be an overbearing, horse-faced woman named Claudia, whose long face grew even longer when they entered her office. Aziraphale made the usual pleasantries, _oh, hello,_ _what a lovely view, have you been enjoying the sunshine?_ but she waved this away, looking stricken.

"But you're British," she blurted out, as they took their seats across from her. "You didn't say that in your note. Oh, no, this is awful… I hope you didn't come all this way... I mean, I really don't think we're going to be able to work with you, honey, if you're not American."

"Oh, she’s American,” said the demon innocently. He took out false papers for one Azira Fell. "We've just been in London for the last several years, for work. But you can’t take the East Coast out of a girl, can you, _honey?_ "

“Go, red socks,” said Aziraphale vaguely. Crowley glared at her.

Claudia held out her hand, and he passed her the spoils of several days of labor: a watermarked birth certificate, a social security card, a complex U.K. work visa. She examined them shrewdly, obviously suspicious, which earned his grudging respect. He was also certain, however, that every detail was correct. Crowley was _very_ good.

"Okay," she said at last, sitting back. "Let's back up a little. Why don't you tell me about the situation?"

Aziraphale recounted the details. She couldn't support a child. Yes, she had considered all of her options. No, the father was still in England. Yes, he was out of the picture.  

Claudia's eyes narrowed. She glanced at Crowley, who knew exactly what she was thinking as she reviewed his flashy clothing, his expensive watch, his sunglasses, the fact he looked several years too old for the tiny blonde beside him. Well, let her think what she wanted to think. He didn't care, as long as she helped them.

"Let me get on the phone with Legal," she said, when the angel finished. "I can't say we've ever had a case quite like this one before."

Crowley had no intention of letting a gaggle of lawyers into the mix. Resorting to plan B, he snapped his fingers under the desk. The woman's eyes glazed over; she rifled through their papers again, unseeingly. "Then again, everything does seem to be in order," she said, sounding confused. "Let's get you in the system, shall we?"

"Must you?" Aziraphale muttered, as Claudia turned to her laptop.

"Do you want to get rid of this baby or not?" he hissed back at her.

Claudia might have been overbearing, but once declawed, she was essential. Within the hour they had the password to the agency website, where they could review prospective parent profiles and bookmark any that they felt might be a good match. On learning that Aziraphale had neither an email account nor an American telephone number, she even signed them up for the agency’s former snail mail system, even though it had technically been retired. Once they had chosen a subset of the applications, she said, the agency would set up the interviews. Then they could make their final decision.

By October, a batch of files was arriving weekly to the brownstone on Charles Street. Letters from would-be parents, recommendations, and background checks slowly began to migrate all over the flat. Ever conscientious, Aziraphale made three piles on the dining room table, one for Yes, one for No, and one for the ones they hadn’t reviewed; they did keep up, at first, but by the time Halloween came they had all but given up, and only the third stack continued to grow.

They would figure it out, eventually, Crowley thought. In the meantime, there were a hundred other, better things for them to do, a dozen diversions in every district of the city – for Crowley was discovering, to his surprise, that he quite liked Boston.

No, he reflected, revising, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He liked Boston with Aziraphale.

They went to Faneuil Hall and watched the street performers, eating bonbons from the market out of a bag. They attended a touring production of the Phantom of the Opera, which Crowley secretly enjoyed, or at least he did until Aziraphale hummed it absently for the next week and a half. They went for oysters on the waterfront before remembering that expecting mothers couldn’t have any, and so they found a southern-style barbeque joint instead, where Crowley ordered chitlins without knowing what they were and Aziraphale laughed herself nearly blue in the face when they arrived.

“Americans,” Crowley grumbled. “Trust them to ruin _pork._ ”

“They’re not that bad,” Aziraphale observed, fairly, when her mirth had subsided, as she tasted one.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Aziraphale?” Crowley said, aghast, watching her dip it in the apple cider vinegar and finish it off. “You used to have taste, angel.”

“I still have taste,” she said peevishly.

“No,” he said, positive. “You've never gone in for this sort of thing. Not ever."

She was wiping her hands fastidiously with a napkin. “Well, my dear boy, people change, you know.”

He looked sidelong at the burgeoning swell of her belly, and supposed they did, at that.

Winter came, and they went to the Nutcracker together, Aziraphale pink-cheeked and shivering in a white woolly jumper, putting her arm shyly through Crowley’s as they climbed the stairs to the mezzanine. They walked the Boston Common in the snow, their breath making frosty clouds as they argued about American tipping, or who had been responsible for what during the Revolution, or nothing at all. They visited the Museum of Fine Arts three Sundays in a row, after Aziraphale fell in love with the touring Ansel Adams exhibit; she offered to go alone, seeing that Crowley was unmoved by the photos, but he liked watching her look at them, and so he came, following her silently from room to room, listening to her talk with his hands in his pockets.

There was work to be done, too, of course. Heaven and Hell didn’t send their respective field agents abroad without expecting some things to get accomplished. As a result, some days they parted ways, taking trains or driving rentals out to various other parts of New England, performing blessings and curses apiece. On those days, however, they generally managed to find their way back before dark, so that they could meet downtown, and so that Aziraphale, who was very obviously pregnant now, could have plenty of time to fuss and grumble and decide what she could stomach for dinner.

Then they would go home. They would sit on opposite ends of the sofa, sharing a ratty afghan that smelled vaguely of cat. Aziraphale would read; Crowley would hunt for the worst thing on cable. An hour or so into this routine, they usually said goodnight and went to bed. As time went on, however, more and more often he would glance over and find her asleep, her book in her lap, leaving him unsure of what to do. Sometimes he carried her to her room, before stumbling off to his own; sometimes he just left the telly on and slept there himself. Whatever he did, she was always up before him, and always managed to have a pot of coffee brewing when he woke.

Such was the negotiation of their strange new world.

They even negotiated Christmas, when it came, albeit with a little difficulty. The angel wanted to go to a service, but Crowley, thinking of all the creches, a hundred newborn infants in their mangers, blanched and refused. She, conversely, did not want to spend hours on the sofa watching reruns of old movies, which was what the demon had always done. They compromised, and, arm in arm, went downtown to look at the lights.

When they came home, she tried to make a meringue pie, to see if she could (with general success, though she ended up having to cheat with the egg whites). Crowley leaned against the counter and put his finger in the filling. “That’s unsanitary, my dear,” she said, reprovingly, when she caught him at it, and feeling petulant, he dipped back into the mixture and daubed her nose with yellow.

Aziraphale was wrathful. She refrained from smiting him, it being Christmas. She did, however, upend the sugar bowl over him, and in the scuffle that followed, they nearly upset the pie.

It was the best holiday he had ever had. And he didn’t even like meringue.

All of this was extremely pleasant, and a good diversion from what was rapidly becoming a serious predicament for the demon, who was waging an increasingly desperate internal battle with every passing day.

*

Unlike angels, demons were fully sexed and sexual creatures, in fact were almost universally bisexual, given the diverse requirements of the job. Crowley, on top of this, had a deeply embarrassing streak of romanticism. In the past, this unfortunate combination had led, on more than one occasion, to some awkward inclinations towards his so-called adversary. It went without saying that he found this mortifying; even more so, when he discovered, as centuries passed, that the angel’s vessel made no difference in the matter. It was enough that it was Aziraphale.

Of course, it was also _Aziraphale_ , and therefore forbidden.

And yet.

He had come close, perilously close, to revealing all of this during the almost-Apocalypse. He had resisted, which ended up being a Very Good Thing (or so he told himself), since the world had not ended at all. They were able to go on as they had, and he considered himself fortunate.

But they had never lived together before.

He knew how she looked while she was sleeping, now. He knew how she liked her tea, and when she had a hankering for something sweet, and when she was crabby. He knew that she hummed in the bath. He knew the peculiar agony that would cross her face when, while reading, she came across a page that had been dog-eared. He knew that she constantly forgot to wear socks, and would putter across their hardwood floors barefoot, and then complain that her toes were cold, without ever making the connection.

It was not just attraction any more, but something deeper, something that was beginning to verge alarmingly on tenderness.

It was horribly distracting. It was also, he felt, rather tasteless, given that Aziraphale was pregnant, and especially given the circumstances of conception. She was not currently sexless by choice, and he was, obviously, less likely to act now than he had ever been. He wasn’t a cad.

But the seductive _if_ remained.

And then it was 2019, and Aziraphale was approaching her third trimester, and he put it out of his mind entirely, for a little while, at least, because they realized that they still had not chosen parents for the child.

*

“There’s just so many,” the angel said, aggrieved. They were going through the backlog of unreviewed files, and her storm-blue eyes were growing dark with dismay. “How are we ever supposed to choose?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Crowley, who was having the time of his life tossing more and more applications into the No pile. Too old, too creepy, too reticent, too into their LARP. “Anyway, it should be easier for us, we have an advantage,” and when she looked at him askance he wiggled his fingers meaningfully. “We’ll _know_ if they’re garbage.”

Something closed off in Aziraphale’s face, as if she was remembering something unpleasant, but she said only, “I suppose.”

Their powers did turn out be useful, at least in a few cases. The first couple they interviewed, for example, might have been a decent match had not Aziraphale discovered, in her silent probe, that the woman consistently underreported the income from her restaurant. This, she felt, was a fatal character flaw, despite Crowley’s best efforts to the contrary. “It’s _America,_ angel, it would only be used as drone money _anyway,_ ” he argued that night, over Thai, but she only scowled at him.

The second family was much, much worse. They looked promising on paper, a graphic designer and an attorney in a D.A.’s office; their combined income made even Crowley raise his eyebrows. Unhappily, however, during the interview, the demon learned that the lawyer accepted an annual fee for prosecuting suspects of a certain demographic. He ended up having to hustle Aziraphale out of the room. (The adoption agency mysteriously lost that couple’s paperwork the next day. It was all very sad.)

The demon liked the third pair immediately, two husbands of a height with each other, one fair, one dark. However, as they all sat down, the latter cracked a joke about the number of Jews in Boston, and he knew, even without looking at the angel, that the interview was effectively over.

At the fourth interview, the man put his hands on Aziraphale’s stomach without asking, Crowley caught the angel’s flinch, and that was that. He knew that she had never liked being touched by strangers, even less so since the events of last summer, and his ire was boundless. He made sure to give the man a staph infection as they left.

“I can’t, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, forlorn, as they walked home together, through the flurries of snow. “I really think I can’t do this. It’s too depressing.”

“We’ve only met four families,” Crowley pointed out, but she refused to be consoled.

He went to the fifth interview alone.

The woman’s name was Tara. She was a pediatrician, and a Lutheran. She loved dogs. They had two, both poodles - “and they’re already great with my brother’s kids,” said the husband, Dex (terrible name, Crowley thought vaguely). “So that won’t be an issue.”

The demon braced himself, turning his attention from the woman, and looked into the heart of one Dex Hornby.

He was the youngest of three, and as such was mildly self-absorbed. He had a streak of obstinacy. He had been tempted to be unfaithful to Tara while they were still only dating, but his conscience had prevailed in the end. He was a banker, because the money was decent, not because he had any sort of passion for it; he had no particular religion, but was vaguely deist. Above all, like Crowley himself, he held that old familiar conviction that, overall, things generally came out all right. Even this, the painful fact of his own sterility, was probably going to be fine.

Every desire in his being was for a child. One to be spoiled, and lectured, and loved.

All right, thought Crowley, and was surprised at how calm he felt. All right.

“Lovely to meet you,” he said, as they stood and shook hands at the end of the hour.

“And you,” said Tara, grinning at him. “I do wish we could have met your wife -"

"Ah,” said Crowley. “Um. She's actually not my _wife._ " He stumbled over the unfamiliar word: it tasted oddly bitter in his mouth.

"Oh," she breathed, her smile gone, her eyes suddenly wide with dismay. "Oh, no, of course, I'm so sorry –the agency didn't specify, but I thought – if she trusted you to come alone -"

"Where is she, anyway?" Dex asked, intervening, giving her a warning look.

"Prenatal appointment," the demon lied. This was untrue on several levels - they hadn't gone to see a doctor at all, secure in the knowledge that, with a celestial host, the fetus would have no major problems - but it seemed like the most palatable answer. The couple visibly relaxed. Oh, how wonderful, please do give her their regards, they hoped everything had gone well. Crowley, who must have liked them more then he realized, quietly vanished their parking ticket as they headed out to their car.

He told Aziraphale about them that night, as they sat knee to knee in a cramped Italian bistro, sharing garlic bread. They had the file at hand, and he turned the pages occasionally, pointing things out: the fact that the woman was a doctor, their job security, their faith. He sat back, hoping that he had made his feelings clear enough. Aziraphale looked from the documents to his face.

“I trust you,” she said simply. Accepting it.

Crowley stared. No one had ever said that to him before. Let alone about anything as important as this.

“You should probably meet them first,” he said, weakly.

She reached across the table, took his hand, and said the incredible words again. “Crowley. I trust you.”

*

They had a second interview anyway. Crowley put his foot down. Regardless of how Aziraphale wanted to handle things, he felt queasy at the thought of watching her hand a baby over to perfect strangers. He called Tara and Dex and arranged a dinner, suggesting a French restaurant that the angel liked, and let the cards fall where they would.

He was relieved to see that he hadn’t missed the mark entirely. Even just taking their seats, Aziraphale and Tara hit it off immediately, dissolving into laughter over an incident involving waterfront parking. The conversation went on, freely, easily, covering everything from raising a child in the city to how the Hornbys had chosen their majors. Crowley, sitting nearly forgotten, saw that the couple looked more and more relieved as time went on, as they warmed to the expectant mother. She was, after all, very easy to love, as he himself knew well. 

Aziraphale was relieved, too. It was clear in her face, and in the way that she held herself, that a massive weight had lifted off her shoulders. She met Crowley’s eyes as she and Tara hugged goodbye, and he read her decision there with elation.

This was good. This was very, very good. They were one step closer to getting out of this mess.

Yet she was curiously silent all the way back to Beacon Hill.

“I owe you an apology,” she said at last, after they had taken up their customary places on the sofa.

“I knew you’d want to meet them,” said Crowley, satisfied, passing her the afghan.

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “Tonight…” and she took a deep breath and set her book aside. This was serious, then. He turned down the volume on the television. “I’m so sorry, my dear boy. I realized that I never said thank you.”

He was bemused. “For going to meet them alone?”

“No. Well, yes, that too. But no. I meant, for this.” She waved a hand at the cramped apartment, the bay window letting in the last rosy rays of light.

“The money’s not an issue, angel,” Crowley observed, still mystified. “It’s not like we’re actually paying for it.”

She looked at him with fond exasperation.

“Crowley,” she said.

Then he understood. He felt his face grow hot, and he looked away, back to the television screen, anything to avoid her piercing storm-blue eyes. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said, and was chagrined when his voice cracked, like an adolescent’s. How fucking embarrassing.

“Yes, I do,” she insisted. Her voice also sounded strange, which helped a little. “I couldn’t have - Without you, this all would have been -”

“Don’t,” Crowley said, uncomfortably.

“But -”

“Aziraphale, you don’t have to thank me,” he repeated. “It’s us.” He could feel her staring, and he went on hastily, trying to find the right words. “It’s always been us, I mean. You and I, we’ve just… we’ve got each other’s backs, yeah?”

She said nothing. He wished he could see her expression, but that would come at the price of looking at her, which he was afraid to do.

Then she stirred. She pushed the blanket aside and came across, to his side of the couch, and sat next to him, arranged herself in the space beside him, fetching the afghan over her feet, as he held very still.

Then Aziraphale did something she had never done before, and laid her head on his chest.

For a moment, neither moved. Crowley, completely caught off guard, was listening to the thunder of his own heartbeat, wondering what to do. Then, tentatively, he shifted and put his arm around her.

They sat like that for a while, and then, for want of something to do with his hands, he turned the volume back up on the television.

They were halfway into an episode of some mundane sitcom when he felt her breathing change, heard her funny whistling snore thread through the dialogue. He looked down at her pale head in the hollow of his arm. Something inside him ached queerly, a mix of sadness and something else, something quiet and soft, magnified tonight by the weight of her body on his.

He did his best not to think about it.

Onscreen, the programs rolled on, one after the other, a talk show, a weather report, something idiotic about spouse swapping. When it finally changed to the news again, at something like four in the morning, Crowley let out a long breath and flicked it off. He gently rolled Aziraphale off of him, and, having stood, stooped over her. She sighed, apparently in her sleep, as he lifted her (with some difficulty, now; she was getting bigger), and picked his way across the hardwood floors to the second bedroom.

Her eyes opened only when he pulled the duvet over her and made to turn away; he felt her seize his wrist, and stilled, instantly nervous, though he didn’t know why.

“Stay.”

It was almost inaudible.

“Angel?”

“Stay,” she repeated.

Crowley’s mouth was as dry as paper. “Are you -”

“Pregnant,” Aziraphale intoned, as if that settled the matter, the universal _therefore I win this argument_ hanging in the air unuttered. Her eyes closed again, but she didn’t let go.

He stood immobilized for far too long, fighting a reptilian instinct to flee. Eventually, she sighed again, released him, and rolled away, burying her face in a pillow. “All right,” she mumbled. “Good night.”

He hesitated a moment longer, and then, scarcely breathing, he sat on the edge of the bed. Aziraphale made room without comment, which was good; he didn’t know if he could handle banter, not about this, not yet. He lay down stiffly, trying to occupy as little space as possible, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, listening to the angel’s breathing slow.

The inception of the Arrangement flitted into his mind, their tentative, taciturn alliance. With no little wonder, he recalled Aziraphale’s uncertain blue eyes, his puckered brow, his sword naked in his hand, as the debate of whether or not to trust a demon raged plainly across his face. Hard to reconcile that moment with this one: the same angel, now snoring faintly again, mere inches from his infernal elbow.

He could not sleep. He doubted very much that he ever would again, if this was a new clause in the Arrangement.

That was a Monday.

On Saturday, when he woke curled around Aziraphale, their fingers laced together over her stomach, he blew her hair out of his mouth irritably and went straight back to sleep.


	4. Parents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there now. Apologies to the characters, they don’t deserve this.

It was April 13th – the day that the swan boats in the Boston Public Garden finally, finally opened back up to the public – and Aziraphale was adamant that, short of another almost-Apocalypse, she was going to ride them.

“You’re due in _four days_ ,” Crowley repeated, waving his hands frantically. “Four days!”

“For heaven’s sake, Crowley, there are women that give birth and go straight back out to the rice paddies,” Aziraphale said crossly. “We’re going to be sitting on little benches, I hardly think that counts as exertion.”

He was not convinced, but something in her face brooked no further argument. They locked up the little brownstone, descended the narrow stairwell down to Charles Street, and went off to the parks.

Crowley had to concede that it was a perfect morning for an outing. For the first time all year, the sky was cloudless and clear, and there wasn’t even so much as a breeze to nip at their throats and wrists. In fact, it was almost hot. Something serpentine woke up inside him and basked lazily in the sunshine. Yes, he thought. Boston had been a good choice.

Beside him, Aziraphale’s happiness was complete. The crowds parted respectfully for her as she walked – or waddled, rather, for her stomach was enormous now. Several people already in line for the swan boats even moved aside, motioning her to cut in, making murmurs of congratulations.

Crowley watched her sidelong, safe behind his sunglasses. Even now, on the first nice day of the year, she insisted on dressing like a grandmother: floral blouse, drab khaki maternity pants, both straining to cover the moon of her belly. And yet, Crowley mused, there was no disguising it – she was radiant today, bewilderingly beautiful, her blue eyes like stars, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Whether it was her ethereal nature, the imminence of the baby, or both, he had no way to tell. He didn’t care. It was enough just to look at her.

The attendant hesitated for just a moment, assessing her girth. The demon coughed and inspected his nails. There was no overt threat, nothing to raise his companion’s suspicion, but for some reason the young man paled and leapt aside, ushering them forward, obsequious.

"What a nice young man," Aziraphale said, as they boarded. Crowley did not reply.

They chose seats at the stern of the boat, their swan’s wings as wide and as white as an angel’s. Beyond them, the gardens, which had been bleak and inhospitable for months, were a riot of color, as if they had been painted overnight. The expectant mother looked around eagerly, tugging at her companion's arm, pointing things out with an almost childlike joy: look at those tulips, my dear, and aren't the magnolias darling?

Crowley still looked only at her. He had the distinct impression that he was watching the final grains slip through an hourglass.

Four days, he thought. They had four days.

He was, to be honest, getting impatient with himself. There were a hundred things he needed to say, and he was running out of chances to say them. The problem was, whenever he opened his mouth to speak, the phrasing just wouldn’t come. He tried to construct the sentences in his head, piecing the awkward words together. He would say, _Aziraphale,_ and _listen,_ and _I know we’re going back to London after this, but,_ and then something like: _the last seven months have been the best of my life,_ and _I’m afraid that leaving will feel like losing you._

Or else he would say, _I know I should be sorry that any of this happened, but I’m not, because it brought us here._

Or: _I have loved you for a very long time now._

This last was dangerous. It was well over a line that the demon had vowed he would not cross. But, especially over the course of the last few weeks, it was becoming more and more difficult to restrain himself from doing just that. They had shared a bed since January. They were never apart for more than hours at a time. They looked at each other, spoke to each other, touched each other, now, with an intimacy that he had never dreamed possible. _If_ he wasn’t imagining things, _if_ she felt the same…

 _If, if, if,_ that persistent old bitch. He despaired.

“Oh, this is _charming,_ ” said Aziraphale, oblivious to his silence. She sat back in her seat with a sigh of contentment as they headed back to the shoreline. “How can we ever go back to St. James after this?”

“I don’t know,” said Crowley, quietly.

She looked at him, her storm-blue eyes pensive, as if something in his response surprised her. She considered his expression for a minute, and then, hesitant, she touched his wrist.

“Crowley,” she began.

The boat nudged against the dock; the attendant motioned for Aziraphale first. She pulled her hand back and got up unsteadily. Crowley helped her take the awkward step up from the deck and watched as she tottered forward, hand in the small of her back, wincing.

“Congratulations, bud,” said a middle-aged man in a baseball cap, eying her appreciatively, and he nudged the demon hard in the ribs. “Boy or girl?”

Crowley, after making sure that the angel was not paying attention, gave him a blistering sunburn with a flick of his fingers, and climbed after her.

“You see?” said Aziraphale, beaming at him, as he caught up to her. Together they strolled away from the line. “No harm done.”

He looked into her shining face. He opened his mouth. The words were there.

And then, out of the blue, she tripped, or seemed to, and staggered against him. Crowley hissed, frustrated, steadying her. The moment popped like a soap bubble. “Careful, _careful_ ,” he said, annoyed. “What are you -”

“Crowley,” she gasped, tilting her face up to his. Her eyes were round with shock. “It _hurts._ ”

She was clutching her stomach.

“Oh, Christ,” said Crowley.

*

Aziraphale was already sweating as Crowley half-carried her through the hospital doors. “Pregnant woman, pregnant woman,” he was hissing. “Move, move, damn you, she’sss having a baby!”

A nurse descended on them with a clipboard, looking bored. Crowley itched to give her a carpal tunnel, or maybe a yeast infection, just for that expression. “When did the contractions start?” They told her, and she made a note, covered a yawn. “Her water hasn’t broken, then.”

“No, not yet,” Aziraphale said, her voice high and strained.

The nurse sighed, tucked the clipboard under her arm. “You’ve got a bit of a wait,” she said. “You’re only in early labor.”

“What?” they said together, and the nurse looked from one to the other, surprised.

“Early labor,” she repeated, eyebrows raised, and then, with growing suspicion, “Where was your prenatal care?”

Crowley supposed that their silence was enough of an answer. Her eyebrows, if possible, climbed even higher, and she took the clipboard back out and made a few more notes.

“Are you the father?” she said to Crowley.

“Yes,” he said tersely, in the same instant that Aziraphale began, “No, he -”

This silence was even worse. Crowley could feel the angel staring at him, but he didn’t turn his head; meanwhile, the nurse was looking at them both with sudden, almost malicious interest. The seconds ticked by. After a moment, Crowley lowered his sunglasses and glared, and the blood drained from her face. She wrote hastily and handed them forms to sign.

Then they were left, without ceremony, in an antiseptic hospital room, and were told to be patient. Crowley texted Tara and Dex, and put his phone away, feeling vexed. Beside him, Aziraphale shuddered, in the animal grip of something he could not understand.

"It doesn't take this long in the movies," he grumbled, feeling more helpless by the minute. “Can’t you just,” and he wiggled his fingers.

“Don’t want to – interfere with the body,” she panted, grimacing as another contraction gripped her. “It knows what it’s doing, theoretically – _ah!_ ”

"It's not rocket science, angel. Do you want me to -" and he stretched out a hand.

" _You_ don’t know what to do," gasped Aziraphale, but without conviction.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised.

Another tremor passed through her, and she trembled and closed her eyes. After a minute, she nodded.

Crowley put his fingertips on her navel and concentrated; she inhaled sharply as he pushed his power into her. Working with great care, he numbed a couple of screaming nerves, and then - with even more caution, for this he had never done before, had never even imagined doing - he began to stretch and expand the delicate tissue of the cervix.

Ten minutes later, she was drenched with sweat, and he was ringing frantically for a nurse. The one that had just instructed patience came to investigate, looking annoyed.

Not long after that, a doctor came at a flat run.

*

Crowley stayed close as they got her feet up into the stirrups. At the risk of getting some very unpleasant questions from Down Below, he continued to work little miracles in Aziraphale’s body, easing passage, numbing pain. He left enough blood to head off unpleasant questions, but even so, the whole thing took an astonishingly short amount of time. They snipped the cord, whisked away the infant to be weighed and tagged, and it was over. The doctor kept repeating that it was the quickest birth she’d ever heard of, and her eyes lingered on Aziraphale’s diminutive frame, her narrow hips, with disbelief. Crowley shivered, following her train of thought, reading how much worse it could have been in the confused furrow of her brow.

He steeled himself, and then looked at the little figure on the hospital bed. Aziraphale’s eyes were closed, her breathing steadying. Crowley glanced at her face, contorted with discomfort, pale hair plastered to her forehead, and then quickly away. Gone was the breathtaking figure in the park that morning; she had honestly never looked worse. He felt irrational fear, coiled like a viper, deep in his gut, though of course mere discorporation was the worst that could happen in this moment, and even that was wildly, ridiculously unlikely. But…

He hated this. How had humans been doing this for thousands of years? This was a terrible, terrible system.

And then the nurse put a tiny person into his hands.

Crowley looked down at it with surprise. He had, of course, seen millions of babies over the course of his infernal time in the world. But. He couldn’t recall anyone ever giving him one to hold before. He racked his brain. Nope. Even the Antichrist had been in a basket.

“Seven pounds,” said the nurse proudly. “She’s a bit small, but she’s healthy. Look, you support the head, like this.” She adjusted his arms.

The tiny, puffy eyes cracked open, revealing slivers of the same stormy blue that Aziraphale’s eyes had been for six thousand years. Crowley opened his mouth to reply, and found that he had no words.

A baby. She had had a baby. He touched the spiderweb of dark and matted hair tentatively. The rosebud mouth opened, coughed. Tiny fingers with miniscule, yet perfectly formed nails stretched out towards him, in jerky, helpless movements.

“Is it,” said Aziraphale feebly. “Is it all right?”

Crowley inched towards her, carefully, gingerly bringing the baby into her line of sight. “She’s here, look, she’s right here. She’s fine.” He hardly knew what he was saying.

“Oh, good,” sighed Aziraphale, her eyes closing. 

“Angel,” Crowley said, nudging her with an elbow. Then again, harder.

“Crowley, for heaven’s sake,” the angel groused. “Stop.” She opened her eyes again to find that Crowley was gently lowering the infant onto her chest, supervised at a distance by the watchful nurse.

Aziraphale blinked. The baby scrunched up her face and started to cry.

“Oh,” Aziraphale murmured. “ _Oh._ ”

Strange pain lanced through the demon as he looked at the little tableau, the weak and weary angel, the tiny flailing hands, the little face that was growing redder with emotion. For a long moment of vertigo, he had the distinct impression that they were not immortal entities at all, but two real parents, suddenly helpless and baffled in the face of one of the great mysteries of life. As if they had, in fact, been human all these years, and he had only just noticed.

The flood of feeling receded, leaving wreckage in its wake. He blinked rapidly. Aziraphale, like Crowley had before her, was touching the dark hair with astonishment, the soft purpling cheeks. “Hello, my dear,” she was saying, quietly, wonderingly. “You’re all right. You’re going to be just fine.”

Crowley turned away.

More hospital staff came and went, bringing ice, juice, blankets. There were more measurements to be taken, more forms to be completed. And then, just after noon, the nurse poked her head in the door and said, “You have two visitors waiting out here. Am I supposed to let them in?”

Aziraphale gestured assent. Tara and Dex came tiptoeing into the room, their faces alight. Crowley transferred the infant into their arms, and went to stand by the angel, who reached shakily for his hand. He glanced down at her, concerned, but all of her attention was on the tiny human they held; she did not look back at him.

“She’s perfect,” said Tara, her eyes shining, as little fingers closed purposefully around her thumb. “She looks like you,” she added, to Crowley, who had no idea how to respond to _that._

“The birth went well?” asked Dex. “I can’t believe how fast it was, we left as soon as we got your message -”

“Providence,” said the demon, smiling beatifically.

“Something like that,” muttered Aziraphale.

Tara cooed to the baby, smoothed the downy hair. “Do you have a name picked out?” she inquired.

“Oh, dear,” said the angel, floundering. “I couldn’t possibly -”

“Grace,” Crowley said. Aziraphale’s fingers tightened in his. This time, he didn’t dare look at her. “If you’re asking.”

“I like that,” breathed Tara, looking down into the tiny, ruddy face. “Grace Hornby.”

Dex kissed the back of her head. “Works for me.”

They stayed for the better part of three hours, making small talk, getting acquainted with the newest member of the family. Crowley eventually found himself wishing that he hadn’t texted them at all. To his great relief, a new nurse finally appeared and, catching wind of his restlessness, shooed them out, under the pretense of giving the birth mother privacy for feeding. Grace, however, wanted only to sleep, and after some deliberation, the nurse sent her out of the room, too, to be put in the nursery.

And then they were alone again, left with the advice that if a baby slept, the parents should too. Crowley breathed out, a long, slow, ragged exhale, as the door finally closed. “Well,” he started to say, turning, and then he froze.

Aziraphale was _weeping._

Crowley’s horror must have shown in his face because she managed a laugh and scrubbed at her face with the hospital blankets. “Hormones,” she said. “So human of me.”

“Are you,” the demon began, helpless in the face of her grief.

“I’m all right, my dear,” she said wearily. “Just – come here, would you, please?”

He went.

The hospital bed should not have fit two, but it found, to its surprise, that it was suddenly a few inches wider than standard issue. Aziraphale was also small, and Crowley had always been thin, and so they made do.

The nurse found them entwined an hour later, when she came to see how they were doing. It might have amused her – it was, after all, only three o’clock in the afternoon; she hadn’t expected that they would actually be able to sleep – but something in their tired faces moved her strangely to pity instead. She decided, in the end, to let them rest.

*

They waited the requisite four days, the window that Massachusetts law provided in case a birth mother decided to keep her child, and then they went to the courthouse.

Tara and Dex were already waiting for them. Tension quivered in every line in their bodies. Crowley could see, even without an occult touch, that they had spent the four nights wondering if Aziraphale would change her mind. They needn’t have worried, he thought; the wan little figure beside him was stiff with resolve. As they all took their seats outside the clerk’s office, she took the documents of surrender from their hands without flinching, scanned them quickly, and signed.

Crowley signed in the space for the birth father's name. Blatant perjury, of course, but the repercussions held no terror for a demon. He included a false address, too, for good measure, and Aziraphale wisely said nothing about it.

The ink gleamed wetly. _Azira Fell / Anthony J. Crowley do hereby voluntarily and unconditionally surrender Grace Hornby to the care of Tara and Dex Hornby, for the purpose of adoption or such other disposition as may be made by a court of competent jurisdiction.... I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS SURRENDER IS FINAL AND CANNOT BE REVOKED._

He expected that to be the end of it, but of course humans were too inventive for that, and more documents had to be produced, signed, dated, notarized. Now and then he glanced at Aziraphale, whose face had a look of extreme concentration, as if she was trying to commit every moment to memory. Tara and Dex whispered to each other, looked things up on their phones, laughed, took pictures. Grace slept in her carrier, as if her fate was not being actively decided with every new hiss of the copy machine. Crowley supposed that was probably for the best.

It was late afternoon by the time the five of them spilled out onto the sidewalk, the sun already low in the sky, flooding the narrow Boston streets with gold. Finally awake, Grace wailed as the light struck her face, and her new parents crowded close around her, kissing her forehead, her nose, her tiny hands, their faces aglow with joy. They looked into each other's eyes. Something unspoken flitted between them, almost tangibly, and was gone.

"Congratulations," said Crowley, watching them, and was surprised to find that he meant it.

He had broken the spell; they turned towards him. "We - we are so grateful," said Dex. He hesitated, and then moved as if to embrace the demon, who backed away hastily. "How can we ever thank you enough?"

"By loving her," Aziraphale said firmly. The demon looked at her sidelong, but this time her eyes were dry.

“We will,” Tara said, choking. “Oh, we will, we promise!”

Crowley let them keep the carrier.

Just like that, it was over. The angel leaned her head against his arm as they watched the car’s taillights recede. "Let's go home, my dear," she murmured, and at last, at last, he felt something in his chest loosen and wash away, eroded by a great tide of relief.

Home, he thought, looking southwest. Yes, they should go home. Beacon Hill was close; they could be back in their apartment in twenty minutes, maybe less, if they hurried. They could turn on the television, share blankets and a bottle of wine, and not think of any of this, for a few hours, at least.  

Only as he was drifting off to sleep that night, lulled by the steady rise and fall of Aziraphale's chest against his, did it occur to him that she might have meant London.

*

Crowley woke to an empty bed. He lay quietly, holding his breath, listening. As far as he could tell, the little brownstone was utterly still.

He considered this for a while, and then he got up.

Aziraphale was standing by the big bay window, a tartan dressing gown wrapped tightly around her body, her arms crossed protectively over her stomach. She was watching the traffic, the change of lights, the endless ebb and flow of cars (for Beacon Hill, like Soho, never slept). Crowley couldn’t see her face. He hesitated, and then, with a twinge of guilt, read her body with a gentle touch of his mind. She wasn’t in physical pain; things that might have been causing a normal woman discomfort after birth were noticeably absent. So. She was sexless again.

That was good, Crowley reflected, as he went to her. The flood of hormones that had tormented her in the hospital would have subsided. Her mind would be a little clearer now.

He tried not to be afraid of her silent tears.

They looked down at Charles Street together, and then, summoning what little courage remained to him after the events of the last few months, he drew her close to him, and waited.

“She’ll die, you know," she said at last. “Someday.”

Crowley’s throat constricted at the anguish in her voice. Unable to speak, he turned her face up to his and clumsily tried to dry her eyes, the tears in her lashes cool to the touch; he cupped her cheek, ran his thumb over her skin, smoothed back her fine pale hair, hoping to convey what he could not put into words, that it would be all right, eventually, though of course he couldn’t say how.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, looking up at him. Her eyes were bright and wet in the moonlight. They breathed in tandem, tasting the other’s breath.

He hesitated. It was not the right moment, he knew that, he wasn’t stupid. But maybe that was all right, after everything they had been through.

_I trust you._

Very softly, very deliberately, he kissed her unresisting mouth.

There was no surprise. There was no passion; they had all the time in the world for that, now, but tonight their wounds were too raw. They simply came together like two halves of a whole, like pieces of something that had never meant to be torn asunder, finally starting to repair. Crowley wondered distantly how he had survived without the feeling for as long as he had. It seemed like a benediction, in this weary and grieving hour. Like… well. Like grace.

Aziraphale tightened her grip on him as he pulled away, and he pressed his lips against her forehead. “I’m here,” he muttered into her skin. _Always will be,_ he thought, but could not say. Until the bloody, bitter, ineffable end.

As if in answer, she sighed and pushed her face into his chest, apparently too tired to weep any longer. He held her tightly. There was nothing else he could do, not really.

They stood by the window for a long time.

*

Their plane touched down at six on April 24th, a cool and gloomy Wednesday, and Crowley, for once in his life, drove just under the speed limit all the way home from Heathrow. Aziraphale watched the buildings flash by, the telephone wires threading the pearl-gray sky, darkening with the promise of a storm. After a while, Crowley turned on the radio, and they listened to an ad for a Honda dealership, the first few chords of a Hozier song. He turned it off again.

It was just starting to drizzle when the Bentley pulled up to the curb in Soho, and they both looked at the shuttered bookshop doors, unremarkable, unchanged, as if no time had passed at all. With crystal clarity, Crowley recalled the first few days after the almost-Apocalypse. The shell shock of finding everything snugly in its place, when the world should have been utterly different, but wasn’t.

Simpler times.

He turned off the ignition. Aziraphale’s shoulders relaxed, almost imperceptibly, but he had been watching for it, and so he knew.

He followed her, as he always had, and always would. Together they went into the shop, through the back room, and up the narrow stairwell into her flat.


	5. Grace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seems like an appropriate place to note that this fic was almost titled A Tree Called Life, after the poem [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], by e.e. cummings. I highly recommend it if you haven’t read it, it’s excellent. (I went for the pun instead… because I always go for the pun.)

Grace had always been curious about her parents.

Not her actual mom and dad, of course. As a doctor and a banker, respectively, Tara and Dex Hornby were paragons of the upper middle class, about as deadly dull as it was possible for two humans to be. Oh, sure, her mom had learned to salsa dance when she was younger, and Dex had been known to take his guitar to the occasional open mic night, but that was the extent of their wild stories, or at least of the ones they were willing to tell their daughter. (There were, in fact, many more that did not fit into this category, of which their child would have no inkling until she herself became a parent. This is a known law of the universe.)

No, what Grace really wanted was the story of her birth parents; she wanted answers to the questions that had plagued her all her life. Why had they decided to give her up? Did they ever think about her? Had they been in love, were they still together?

And most pressing of all: _where were they?_

She had seen her birth certificate and the documents of surrender, when her parents had deemed her old enough, and traced her fingers over the exotic names: _Azira Fell, Anthony J. Crowley._ They had been living in London, her mother said, but it was the strangest thing: there was no Azira Fell in London, had never been, it seemed. The closest she could find was an A. Z. Fell, a bachelor, who ran a ratty old bookshop in Soho. She wondered if they had been siblings, if maybe the sister had died, but there were no obituaries, either.

Anthony J. Crowley was a little easier to track – his name turned up everywhere, on boards of directors, subprime mortgage loan packages, and bizarrely, the list of principal benefactors of the British Royal Ballet. But when she sent emails, no one could ever recall actually meeting him.

The address they had given was also complete bogus, of course. It wasn’t even residential. Googling it led her only to a random airbase, somewhere in a place called Lower Tadfield.

It was as if they had never existed.

That was the part that hurt the worst, if she was being honest with herself. Not being given up in the first place, no, but rather this: that her parents had lied so comprehensively, so completely, even risking prosecution for perjury. They had clearly meant to prevent her from ever finding them.

“They must just be awful people,” she had sobbed into her father’s shirt, when she first made these discoveries.

Dex held her tightly. “They can’t have been. They gave you to us, didn't they?"

"But then how could they do this? Why would they lie?"

"I don't know, sweetie," he had answered, painfully honest, stroking her hair. "But I remember them both as good, kindhearted people. If they lied, they must have had a good reason."

This was hard to stomach. But Tara felt the same way, and gradually Grace began to accept it, even turning it into a game. Maybe her parents were secret superheroes, and were protecting her from criminals; maybe they were on a dangerous government mission, isolated, forbidden to love. Her fantasies grew more and more outrageous, though she suspected that she never quite hit on the truth.

As she got older, though, she began to make peace with the fact that she would simply never know. The great unsolved mystery of her birth parents faded to a puzzle that she didn't need to understand in order to forgive them, and even love them, at least a little.

This was easier for her to do than it would have been for most people, for Grace J. Hornby already lived in a world crammed full of mysteries.

*

It had started when she was three. She had left her beloved stuffed elephant on the metro and sobbed over it, until her father found him under the bed days later, freshly laundered, with his missing eye restored. Ever practical, Dex Hornby decided that his daughter must have left Phantsy at home after all and thought no more about it, but Grace, starry-eyed, hugged the plush body to hers and savored the truth: it was a tiny miracle, just for her.

A year later, one of their poodles ran away during a camping trip, and they searched for hours, to no avail. All three of them had been distraught. On arriving home, however, Grace had discovered him safely shut in their backyard, hoarse with barking. Her parents had exchanged worried glances as she squealed and buried her face in his fur.

Dr. Tara Hornby, the pediatrician, had grown even more concerned when, at nine, her daughter fractured her radius and ulna learning to rollerblade, but the cast came off her wrist in one week instead of six. “It’s just not natural,” Grace had overheard her saying to her father, after dinner. “I don’t know, maybe I’m imagining it, but… it’s strange, isn’t it? All these little things?”

“She must have a guardian angel,” Dex had said, calmly.

Grace, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, had always privately assumed that she had at least _two_.

The list went on, a series of small oddities that were stranger in their sum. When she was sixteen, and joined the girls’ tennis team, the distressingly handsy coach discovered that what he really wanted to do that year was retire. When she was twenty-one, she lost a thumbdrive with the final draft of her UMass capstone on it, and when she went to confess to her advisor in a blind panic, intending to beg for an extension, he bemusedly picked it up off his desk and handed it to her.

Her twenty-fourth birthday was even more bizarre. She had far too much to drink, lost her keys in a storm drain, and then climbed in a car with a gorgeous, red-lipped stranger somewhere in Beacon Hill. That was the last thing she remembered, before, impossibly, waking up in her own bed the next morning, with a glass of water, two ibuprofen, and the keys set out on her nightstand. Her roommate swore he had never even heard her come home. She wondered if maybe she had dreamed it, but there were lipstick marks on her mouth when she went to shower. It was baffling.

And then there was Paulina, and the lilies.

Paulina - beautiful, funny, patient Paulina - had been a miracle in and of herself, of course. The lilies, however, were inexplicable. She had brought Grace a bouquet of them on their first date, which was not itself remarkable, except that they had lasted far longer than any flowers Grace (or the internet) had ever heard of. It was as if the universe itself was saying, _Pay attention, Grace. She could be the one._

She was, as it turned out.

Her death, by rights, should have stopped the Earth from turning, dimmed the sun, blackened the very firmament. On the night it had happened Grace had shut the door on the police and damned all drunk drivers straight to Hell. She had made four brief, extremely painful phone calls; she had poured herself a glass of wine with shaking hands. Then, suddenly out of her mind with rage, she had hurled it at the wall, leaving a bloody arc that ran in streaks down to the skirting.

Then she had gone upstairs, where she had stayed for something like three days.

Not surprisingly, she had dreaded the memorial service, had not even wanted to get out of bed without her spouse of thirty years, but their daughter Azira and her fiancé had finally wheedled her into the car. Thank God they had, Grace thought, later; she might have missed it entirely.

"Woah," Azira whispered, as they walked into the nave together, and Grace had actually laughed through her tears.

Glorious, luminous lilies, at least four hundred of them, thronged the aisles. They lined the walls, spilled from the altar, sat on pews, filled the entire church, a spectacle more triumphant than an Easter service. Most stunning of all, not a soul could tell her who they were from. Grace had made phone call after phone call, contacting half the people in the parish before the month was over, but all she learned was that anonymous benefactors had been sorry for her loss.

Nor was that all. Identical white lilies bloomed every year after that, all down her driveway and in a riot below her mailbox, the lushest and most verdant plants in Leominster. Grace had wept over them more than once, touching the pearly petals in bewilderment. _Someone_ must have planted them. She just wished she knew who to _thank_.

Life rushed on, carrying her with it, preventing her from getting lost in her grief. Joy even crept back into the world, eventually. Thirteen months to the day after Paulina’s funeral, Grace walked Azira up the aisle of a little chapel in Cambridge and watched her daughter become a wife herself. Two years after that found them in a cramped hospital room, tired but ecstatic, with the first of the grandchildren, Dexter and Paul. (More white lilies arrived at the hospital that afternoon. The mothers’ storm-blue eyes had shone with wonder when the nurse carried them in.)

And now Azira had a second husband, and the twins had their diplomas, somehow, and little Tara had her driver’s permit, which was frankly alarming.

Grace, meanwhile, gray-haired and finally beginning to feel her age, had a secret.

*

Severe aortic valve stenosis, the doctors called it. The prognosis had not been good; twenty percent lived five years, and Grace, coming up on eighty, knew what it meant.

She had not yet told Azira. Nor, if she was being honest, was she planning to. Azira would only worry, would fuss and cry and talk about surgeries and assisted living, and this was a mess that Grace decidedly did not want. She had too much to do; she was _busy._ She had plants to water, favorite books to revisit, a floral afghan for Tara that she wanted to finish before the holidays.

It was this last she was working on, wrapping up the final corner of the blanket on a blindingly sunny December morning, when the strangers came.

The unexpected knock made her pause. Now, who could that be? she wondered, her needles growing still. The boys were on their winter break, and Azira had promised that they would all come by on Saturday and take her to lunch, but that was days from now. A package, perhaps? Had she ordered something? It was harder to remember things like that, these days. But no, the knock came again. “Hello?” she called. “Who’s there?”

In answer, the front door swung open. But that was impossible: she kept it locked. Grace let her knitting fall to her lap as she stared.

A stranger, silhouetted against the brilliant morning light, was coming slowly into the room. Her heart skipped a beat – she had heard of men that preyed on older women for sport, robbing them, sometimes even hurting them – but he was moving very cautiously, his hands spread wide, palms up, the universal sign for _I come in peace._ There was also something in his face, a sort of earnest benevolence, that invited trust. She felt her initial fright begin to fade.

 _Sure, trust a stranger that managed to break into your house,_ she thought sardonically. _You daft old fool._

“Hello, Grace,” he said, coming towards her, and she drew away instinctively. Having a winsome countenance could still only get you so far. He stopped, seeing her discomfort.

“I’m sorry,” she said sharply. “Do I know you?”

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Well, no. I would be very surprised, if you remembered.”

He was _British,_ Grace realized. Why was there a British stranger in her living room?

Her eyes moved past him. There was a second figure in the doorway now, slouching insolently against the doorjamb. She couldn’t see his eyes, he was wearing sunglasses, but she had the distinct impression that he was looking around the room, taking in her wall hangings, her furniture, her numerous houseplants. Perhaps she was being robbed after all.

“However,” the one in front of her continued, “I do remember you. And I’m very happy to see you again, my dear.”

Again, she marveled at her irrational, idiotic desire to like him. He was smiling at her now, and she actually caught herself grinning back. _These men just broke into your house,_ she reminded herself, astonished, yet still she couldn’t find it in herself to feel any real fear. She couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. She simply had the strong impression that this was going to be another one of her mysteries, and those had only ever been boons.

The smile was a mistake. As if it had given him permission, he took few more quick steps forward and knelt at the foot of her chair, looking earnestly up at her. His eyes roved, almost hungrily, over her face.

“You’re still so young,” he breathed, as if to himself. Grace could have laughed – she would be eighty in April; no one had called her young in decades – but there was a wistfulness in his voice that gave her pause. "Oh, dear heart, you need more _time._ ” He lifted two fingers, pointed them at her breastbone. For a moment she had the queer premonition of an electric shock.

"We can't, angel," the other said quietly from the doorway. "You know the rules. Not at the end, not with people."

Grace, finding all of this rather cryptic, was relieved when the first man swallowed, nodded, and merely clasped her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again, wondering what on earth she was supposed to do. Stuff like this just didn’t _happen_ to normal people. She wanted to draw her hands away, but his grip on them was tight. “I, um. I didn’t catch your name?”

He looked conflicted, even perplexed. As if she had asked him a difficult question, Grace thought, and smothered another grin.

The silence lengthened; he opened his mouth.

And then, abruptly, there was Another in the room with them.

This time it was a figure that Grace recognized.

After all, she had known it was coming for quite a long time now. She hadn’t thought it would be today, of course, but she supposed that no one ever did. With an appraising eye, she examined the caricature of its face, its cloak of shadow, the ominous glint of its scythe.

She knew that she should feel fear. To her relief, she found that she had very little. Apprehension was being crowded out of her by a joyful and silent voice that cried out, over and over again, _Paulina_ (- and oh, she had waited so patiently)!

She straightened in her chair, stuck her chin out, and waited for the swing that would sever the thread of her life. The newcomer, however, seemed more interested in the two strange men than in Grace.

I SEE THAT YOU HAVE COME TO SAY FAREWELL TO YOUR DAUGHTER, it observed. THAT IS… UNORTHODOX. I HOPE YOU DID THE PAPERWORK.

The man lingering in the doorway made a gesture that indicated that the paperwork could go fuck itself. It might have made Grace laugh, another time. At that particular moment, however, her attention was wholly taken up by a different word.

“ ‘Daughter,’” she repeated, tasting it, incredulous, her gaze drawn back to the stranger at her feet. He was _British,_ she thought suddenly, with a rush of amazement. And there was something strangely familiar about his eyes. “What - Are you my _father?_ ”

She knew the name as well as she knew her own. _Anthony J. Crowley._ But no, he didn’t look like an Anthony. More to the point, she realized, it was logically impossible. He looked at least thirty years younger than she was; he seemed to be about fifty years old, perhaps less. She burst out laughing at herself. Grace, Grace, she thought, trying to catch her breath. You’re getting old.

The man laughed, too, although his eyes were red. “Not exactly, no,” he admitted. “Anyway, dear girl, Dex Hornby was your father.”

 _And he wouldn’t have much liked this,_ thought Grace, still wheezing, _two strangers barging into his daughter’s house;_ and only then did she notice that it was getting harder to breathe.

COME NOW, GRACE. The hooded figure had finally turned to her, was adjusting its grip on the scythe. Light glittered on the subtle blade. TIME TO GO.

The stranger’s hands tightened on hers. “Will it hurt?” he asked, his voice trembling. Grace managed to grin down at him, trying to reassure him; the poor thing just looked so _worried._

“Shouldn’t that be my question?” she teased, with the very last of her air.

ONLY FOR A MOMENT, said the Other, more to the strangers than to her, and then it moved.

The man in the doorway made an abortive movement, but it was already over.

Grace got to her feet and dusted herself off. “Well, that stung,” she said, and was surprised that her voice, ragged only seconds before, was as clear as a bell again, as it had been when she was a girl. Better still, the band tightening across her chest had utterly vanished. “Not my favorite, I have to say.”

FEW ARE ENTHUSIASTIC. FOR SOME REASON.

“That makes sense,” Grace agreed. “So. What happens next?” She lifted her hands to her face, examining them. They seemed to be fading around the edges, dissipating into air. Her fingers went blurry even as she watched

She tried to snap them. She failed.

THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER STORY, said Death calmly.

*

In the room, letting go of the motionless, gray-haired waif of a woman, Aziraphale fumbled for a handkerchief and blew his nose noisily. Leaning forward, he straightened her bifocals, drew the unfinished afghan from her lap, and tucked it around her, though of course it was foolish; it was very apparent that she would never be cold again.

With great care, he took her gnarled hands and folded them together in her lap. His thumb lingered on the star of her engagement ring. As if it had reminded him of something, he paused. Then he produced a white lily and set it in her arms.

“Ineffable,” he said, very softly, to no one in particular.

Crowley cleared his throat and finally came into the room, shoulders squared, as if against an invisible threat. “We should go,” he said, his voice gruff. “Don’t want to be found here.”

The angel sighed, took the proffered hand, and climbed unsteadily to his feet. He did not reply. He also did not look back, although the demon did, at the threshold, just for a moment, his sunglasses masking his expression.

Then he followed Aziraphale out into the light.

 


End file.
